1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to multimedia conferencing. More specifically, an exemplary embodiment of the invention is directed toward bandwidth management in multimedia conferencing.
2. Description of Related Art
The use of video conferencing, which allows remote parties to both see and hear one another, is becoming increasingly popular. In particular, such applications facilitate remote communication by providing a visual image of one or more conference participants. Accordingly, video conferencing allows parties to communicate audibly and visibly, without requiring lengthy and expensive travel.
Video or audio conferencing systems are usually employed for setting up virtual conferences. Typically, participants join at a specified time for the conference by connecting to the conferencing systems. The conferencing systems may therefore have to handle multiple conferences simultaneously or sequentially.
Generally, most conferences are scheduled to start exactly on the hour and to last exactly one hour, while some other conferences start on the half hour and go for half an hour. For example, a conference may run from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM or from 10:30 AM to 11:00 AM. Sometime, some participants may tend to arrive early for conferences, and some may tend to stay late after conferences. For example, the participants may arrive at 9:55 AM for a call scheduled from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM, and may leave at 11:05 AM. Moreover, a next conference may be scheduled to start at the end time of a previous conference. This can result in a short-term peak traffic surge around those times that can drastically increase the usage of both ports and bandwidth of the conferencing system and/or a physical location that houses a participant or components of the conferencing system.
It might appear that this problem can be solved by good manners, strict enforcement of conference boundary times, and so forth. For example, some systems show only a still image before the start time of the conference, and then switch at the start time to moving images. However, this approach may sometimes deprive the participants of some useful information (for example, a video that is freely available). Moreover, the participants may forget or decline to implement this technique.
For the reasons set forth above, there is a need for a method and system capable of automatically allocating bandwidth across several conferences or communication links.